Urban Spoon

Urban Spoon launched in the first few days of the App store to much hyperbole. It's an Application for finding restaurants, coffee shops and cafes in your area but with a little 'fun' thrown in - allegedly.

The fun angle is that you shake your iPhone (looking like a complete idiot if in public) to get seemingly random suggestions for restaurants in a chosen location.

Testing it as I write this I have 'shaken' Urban Spoon to find a mid priced pizza restaurant in Richmond, it's second suggestion for me is Matsuba - a Japanese restaurant. Hmm.

So accuracy isn't great but more importantly to me is finding restaurants that people actually like. I want to find the best eateries but the only search options are location, type of food and price bracket. Shaking only gives you one option which appears to be randomly chosen.

Changing the Filter (via the button at the top right) to show Only Popular eateries seems only to show the number one rated place to match choices. I want to see the top 3 restaurants that match my criteria in an area and then make a choice based on the reviews and their exact distance.

This may sound a bit pedantic but the end result is that I don't trust the recommendations that UrbanSpoon suggests to me. It's just a gimmick.